BRASILIA – The president of the Brazilian Senate announced Tuesday that the upper chamber will discuss a pair of bills proposing to allocate 10 percent of gross domestic product to health care and the same amount to education.

Both bills were included in a “positive agenda” announced Tuesday by Renan Calheiros as a response to the demands of the demonstrations that have rocked the country over the past two weeks.

“All the bills will be voted upon,” said Calheiros, who also proposed that the Senate not go into recess on July 18, as scheduled, but rather continue working.

“Society is demanding improvements in day to day (life)” and no branch of government “can turn a deaf ear to those demands,” he said.

Calheiros said that also to be included on the new agenda will be bills that will increase the penalties for violent crimes and corruption, which are at the heart of the demands expressed in the protests.

He also proposed bringing to a vote a bill allocating all the royalties generated from exploiting the petroleum in recently discovered deepwater deposits to education, just as the government of President Dilma Rousseff is calling for.

Calheiros also expressed support for the plebiscite that Rousseff proposed to bring to fruition a political reform that Congress has been postponing for decades. EFE

Enter your email address to subscribe to free headlines (and great cartoons so every email has a happy ending!) from the Latin American Herald Tribune: